Matt Barkley taking the call that made him a Philadelphia Eagles. Image via PhiladelphiaEagles.com

Chip Kelly and the Philadelphia Eagles had the biggest surprise of all in Day 3 of the NFL Draft when they traded up three spots to the top of the 4th round to nab USC quarterback Matt Barkley. The move was surprising for a number of reasons, but particularly because of the questions it raises.

What does the pick mean for the overall quaterback situation for the Birds, in particular for the futures of Mike Vick and Nick Foles on the team? And what does it mean about the type of offense we may see from Kelly?

The 2011 NFL Draft has come to an end. Football fans will go into withdrawal trying to recover from the megadose of football goodness they’ve received since Thursday.

For now, the fun doesn’t have to end. Here is a run down of the Eagles selections from the 3rd and final day of the draft, including comments from head coach Andy Reid on the selections, courtesy of PhiladelphiaEagles.com.

This pick makes my attempts at predicting the Eagles selections not entirely worthless. I had the Eagles selecting Matthews in the 3rd round. He was picked instead in the 4th, but I’m still calling it a win.

Andy Reid says:

“Inside linebacker/outside linebacker. Can play either strong side or weak side or the MIKE and I’ll get together with Juan and figure out exactly where we’ll use him … Howie and are, we’re going to sit down and go through all of that. He gave us the flexibility, I know he can step in and be your MIKE linebacker. He’s highly intelligent and he did that at Oregon in their nickel package. You saw him making all their calls all the time, so you know he can do that. At the same time, he played WILL in their base package so you got to see him do that. I have confidence he can go play whatever position out of the three that we have there.”

The pick of a kicker may be the most talked about selection by the Birds in terms of the potential drama. Akers is 36 years old, and even if the Eagles plan to retain him in 2011 they needed to find an heir apparent.

Will Akers take Henery’s selection as a slight? Will it make him again worry about his longevity with the team? Akers’ agent, Jerrold Colton, told Jeff McLane that Akers was “taking the news in stride.”

Andy Reid says:

“Kicker/punter. We’ll just see how everything goes with our kicker and punter as time goes on, David (Akers) and Sav (Rocca). We sure are glad to have Alex aboard. He was the best in college football. At this particular time, it was hard to pass him up.”